Trouble Light, a new release from Gerald McCarthy

Early response to Trouble Light

Gerald McCarthy is ”…an exceptional poet who, in Trouble Light, has concentrated on the themes closest to his heart: working-class ethnicity, family life, war and recovery from war, prisons and the prisons we create within ourselves, personal loss, and our inability to heal from certain injuries. The author himself adds, ‘The poems about Italy that make up the last section of Trouble Light are not pastoral poems of the landscape, but poems about memory and the connectedness of historical experience.’”
—University of New Mexico Press

“McCarthy is a rare mix, an important war poet—threading the trauma of Vietnam through the needle of Iraq—and a truly fine observer of the American scene. For too long he’s been a secret treasure of American poetry. With Trouble Light, the secret is out for good.”
—David Means

“McCarthy’s sharply observed world pulses with knowledge of war, loss, and wounds slow to heal. Landscapes of his beloved Italy along with the “stone roads” of a hardscrabble American childhood are evoked in precise and moving language and given a variety of tones, both sensual and austere. The intensity of a life lived through a passion for beauty and tough realities assure us that we are in touch with a vibrant poet. These poems signal a continued high level of mastery and deserve our best praise.”
—Colette Inez

Buy Trouble Light now from Amazon.com or buy a signed, personalized copy from Gerald